


The Same Computer Astronauts Use to Do Their Taxes

by easyforpauline



Series: an early name used for videophones [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: (if you ignore all the parts about Steve's depression), Banter, Begging, Boot Worship, Chronic Pain, Cuddling & Snuggling, Degradation, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub, Domestic, Face Slapping, Gags, General Good-Time-Having, Gentleness, Hair-pulling, Humiliation, Kneeling, M/M, Manhandling, Objectification, Oral Sex Performed on Inanimate Object, Orgasm Denial, Pinching, Praise Kink, Stone Top, Technological Kink, Video & Computer Games, improvised bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 14:50:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7719028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easyforpauline/pseuds/easyforpauline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So, a one-hundred-year-old man [fucked] a thirty-year-old video game? This I’ve got to see.”</p><p>-Jeff Winger, Community ep. 3x20, "Digital Estate Planning"</p><p>(Bucky buys a Pac-Man machine and really, really likes it. Steve really, really likes that he really, really likes it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Same Computer Astronauts Use to Do Their Taxes

**Author's Note:**

> Little-known fact: The MCU takes place in an alternate universe in which arcade game cabinets are made entirely out of metal, not out of wood. "MCU" stands for Metal Cabinet Universe. 
> 
> \+ One specific trigger warning in end notes regarding Bucky's PTSD.

Nothing feels good tonight. Bucky’s trying to lounge on the living room floor with a script and a pen for doodling in the margins, but every few minutes he has to readjust his position. Every way he tries, a twinge or stab or persistent dull ache makes itself known up and down and around his spine. On the couch, Steve is reading a biography of Sally Ride, tongue between his teeth.

Really, if he can’t relax anyway, he should do something more productive than drawing a small space alien, but he’s being careful with himself about not taking work home, and there’s nothing about the apartment that immediately stands out as in need of fixing.

He rolls onto his front and pushes his right shoulder up, his hand flat along the small of his back. That does nothing for him, so he gets on his side again, propping his head up on his left hand and bending one of his legs at the knee.

Without looking away from his book, Steve says, “Fidgety puppy, aren’t you?”

Bucky sits up and glares until Steve feels like acknowledging him. All he gets, when that finally happens, is a smirk.

“My back hurts.”

Steve winces with his face. “Oh. Sorry. There’s gotta be something we can do about that.”

“Acupuncture.” Bucky sticks the pen behind his ear. He bends his knees up and lets his head fall between them.

“You really gonna let a doctor stick needles in you?”

“No. But I want to. I want to look like a porcupine.”

“Let me figure that out for you. You don’t need to risk fucking yourself up over it.”

“I wasn’t _going_ to.” He sighs and flops back down. “Thank you.”

Steve holds his hand out. Smiles about a centimeter for about a second. He’s looking worn, half-lidded and colorless. But he’s always, in Bucky’s eyes, been a particular kind of blinding beautiful when he gets haggard. He’s a different kind of beautiful when he can trick a person into thinking he’s slept and eaten. Both looks are pretty great, but this one stirs up old worry in his chest.

Bucky drags himself along the floor with one right arm, one left elbow, and a lot of exaggerated grunting, and Steve frowns. His eyebrows scrunch like caterpillars in search of foliage. “Walking a problem?”

“No. Legs—Those are no problem.” Upon arrival at the couch, he gets up on his knees and throws his head and chest into Steve’s lap. “Walking’s fine. I’ll walk when I’m a porcupine.”

Steve pushes some hair out of Bucky’s face for him, tucking it safely behind his ear. His voice is warm when he says, “You could have crawled.”

Bucky laughs. “I’ll crawl when I’m a porcupine too.”

“I didn’t say I could transform you into a porcupine. I’ll make you look like a porcupine. You’ll still really be a giant asshole.”

“A giant, crawling asshole.”

“That’ll hit the spot.”

“What?” Bucky puts his arms around Steve’s waist and nudges his stomach with the top of his head.

“I don’t know. But I said it, so I meant it.”

“Make my back hurt less.”

“Well, I could, uh.”

“I’m kidding. I know you can’t. That’s all right. This too shall pass.”

 

After Steve goes to get him a handful of extra-strength Advil with a shrug and a, “Even this dose’ll probably do nothing, but it’s not going to hurt,” Bucky climbs onto the back of the couch. He lies on his side, positioned so that his head can curl around Steve’s neck to rest on his shoulder. He gives the side of Steve’s neck a row of kisses ending at the stretched-out collar of his t-shirt.

Steve lifts the arm farthest from Bucky’s head and wraps a hand around one his ankles. He says, “Are you reading over my shoulder?”

“Yes. Why, is this biography of an astronaut too personal for me to read over your shoulder?”

“What if it were?”

“Then I guess you’d have to push me off the back of the couch, because I’m installed here for a while.”

“Hmm. I don’t think so. What if I told you to close your eyes?”

“That depends. You want to commit to the conceit that this _biography_ of an _astronaut_ is too _personal_? Because that’s what you’d be doing.”

“I’m in the Air and Space Museum. We’re connected. It’s intimate.”

There’s no good response to that, so Bucky licks a fast, wet stripe up Steve’s neck to his ear. Steve says, “Jesus! Close your eyes right the hell now.” He giggles through the last couple words, but has enough composure to get a hold of a sizeable strand of Bucky’s hair and pull—not enough to hurt, but enough to hold him in place.

Bucky _mmm_ s and closes his eyes. He shifts his head around to get a feel for how held in place he is, exactly. The answer is very. The answer is, “Like a dandelion.”

 He says, “You could read your book to me. If you wanted to.”

“I know I could. Would that be interesting to you?”

“Yeah. You know me. It’s all interesting.”  

It is. It all is, that’s true, but space travel has a certain glimmer that nothing else can replicate. He associates it with the Museum, and with pulp stories, and with knocking shoulders with a newly shoulder-heavy Steve after leaving his first ever meeting with Howard Stark and saying, “So, you think that guy’s ever gonna build a car that flies to the moon? Because he’s a lunatic? It’s funny. It’s a funny joke.” He associates it with one vague, flickering memory of being pulled out of cryo for something to do with the space race, and that’s one of the funnier vague memories he has. He treasures any he can dig up.

Steve falls asleep. Bucky’s been moving his lips in small motions on the side of his jaw for almost a chapter, eyes closed, Steve’s Steve smell and resonant Steve voice and vibrating throat collaging into a whole world. And the biographical information. That’s part of the dark, pleasant Steve world too. Factuality.

All of these things have been an anchor, a thing to recite for himself every time his back twinges or stabs or spasms anew.

But Steve starts to slur the sentences, then to mumble, then to make thoughtful hums, and when it’s obvious from the quiet that he’s dropped off, Bucky gives himself another moment to be there. To quietly drink in the feel of himself, stretched out behind a sleeping Steve’s head, like a lion guarding royalty. Something strong and beloved.

He lets himself have that, and then he gets up, blinking at the floor lamp’s glow. He considers telling Steve later, “Hey, you never told me to open my eyes. I can’t believe I took matters into my own hands just because you needed a nap,” to see what he might do.

An irrelevant thought right now.

He walks around the couch and crouches down. Steve needs his shoes off, he needs a blanket, and he needs to be made horizontal. The thing about how rarely he sleeps is that when he crashes, he crashes hard. Bucky’s rearranged him and tucked him in before, and it’s always like rearranging and tucking in a particularly pretty boulder.

He gets to unlacing Steve’s shoes one-handed. He ties and unties his own shoes with his left hand all the time no problem; it’s a precision instrument, but he’s feeling too tender to take his chances with these. They’re ankle boots, styled to look like spectator shoes, in black and white leather. Not Steve’s usual twenty-first century look. On a whim and trying to keep himself from panicking in a department store, Bucky bought them for him, mostly to be annoying. He figured there was a 90% chance Steve would say, “Uh, thanks, I guess,” and hide them at the back of his closet, and then Bucky could donate them to Housing Works or something.

The joke was on him. Steve wears them all the time, even with ratty sweatpants. Probably also to be annoying.

He doesn’t take very great care of them, or any care at all; they’re scuffed in a good dozen places and the laces have split ends from getting stepped all over. Bucky pauses once they’re untied but still on, and smooths his left thumb over a scuff marring the instep. He thinks about spit-shining or even polishing them proper, and about replacing the laces with the most garish spiral monstrosities he can find, to see what will make Steve break and admit he thinks they’re ostentatious.

Except, of course, he doesn’t want Steve to break. He wants Steve to wear them to pieces, defiantly fancy. But the polishing thing isn’t off the table. Or buying him serious new laces. He tries to remember to write those ideas down when he’s done here.

He pulls the boots off and settles them in his lap like he might a pet rabbit or a backpack.

Steve’s mouth hangs open. He’s slumped to one side and drooling, and his breaths are so slow as to be almost imperceptible, a fact which stopped scaring Bucky senseless decades ago. It’s a sight all too rare. His hand twitches absently, caught in a dream, where he’s left it sitting heavy on a couch cushion.

Bucky puts the sole of a boot against the side of his face, tapping gently, knowing he might be leaving visible dirt on his cheek because, as established, Steve is _a mess_. He laughs at himself, silent and restrained, and sets both shoes down off to the side of the couch so they’re lined up perfectly straight.

Months ago, they agreed that the living room looked spare with only the couch, the lamp, and the TV, so they brought home a fat grey armchair, and pulled it into the corner of the room, and both proceeded to never sit there. Once, Natasha came over and tried to sit down, and for whatever shared crazy reason, Steve and Bucky both yelped. She sprang back out of the chair in a way that looked too graceful for the hard sound of “sprang” and stared at the seat like she expected to see knives or obvious structural instability.

Steve said, “Uh. I mean, never mind, sorry,” and Bucky said, “You can’t sit there. Our pet ghost sits there.”

She shrugged and sprawled across the couch.

Now, it’s a place for storing things. Like blankets, and quilts, and electric bills, and extra batteries for the clicker, and ghosts.

Right hand steadying Steve’s shoulder and left arm under his legs, Bucky’s able to rotate his sleep-weighty body so that all of him is horizontal on the couch. Then he drapes him in a red and green quilt, and draws the back of his hand up the side of Steve’s face. His eyelids flutter, but stay shut.

On some molecular level, his body is disinterested in fearing Bucky’s body. It knows who’s here, who’s creeping around with quilts and affection, and it won’t even do anything to tell Steve to stay alert, pay attention, be ready for the attack.

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut and smiles, trying not to be terrified, then takes a deep breath and goes about his business.

 

Steve rouses himself an hour and twenty-seven minutes later.

At this point, Bucky is hanging out on the floor again, within arm’s reach of Steve. He’s had three glasses of water doped with more Advil, guiltily worked on a quick project for work, changed into a muscle tee to do some 360-degree rotations of his arm, and texted Steve a message he wants passed on to Sam ( _You have hollow bones and exercise a lot! Tell me about how you “manage” your fragile mortal bird “pain”)_.

He’s on his laptop, his work project minimized, overshadowed by a cluster of several dozen tabs, all bits of personal research, all equally valuable, all in total disarray. He hasn’t figured out a system yet. In contrast, he also has open the very organized spreadsheet, “STUFF I OWN,” which Steve has glanced at over his shoulder before and rolled his eyes about.

“What,” Bucky said at the time, his mouth full of macaroni, “just because _your_ ‘STUFF I OWN’ spreadsheet would only be a big photo of me with hearts doodled all over?”

“Huh,” Steve said, pinching him roughly on the back of the neck and moving away. “Will you make me that?”

At the sound of a yawn and a cumbersome body rolling over somehow discontentedly, Bucky bites his tongue and puts his palm over his forehead. It’s too soon. Way too soon. Barely even a full sleep cycle and Steve’s ready to run himself further into the ground. Keep running until he hits the molten core.

A wet, stinging feeling draws an arrow up Bucky’s throat and behind his eyes. How many different ways does his body gotta have to tell him he’s sad about something?

He scoots closer, closing his laptop and sliding it under the couch. He puts his right elbow on the sliver of cushion unoccupied by Steve, who’s on his side and smacking his lips, grimacing. Steve grunts. “Why am I thirsty?”

“Yeah good morning to you too, Early Bird.”

“Aren’t you s’posed to be good at the clock?”

Bucky laughs. “What?”

“You know what I meant. It’s dark out. The lamp’s on.”

“There are those famed Captain America observational skills.”

Steve goes to smack him on the cheek but either he’s still too groggy or he lacks the motivation to follow his swing through, and his hand flops onto Bucky’s propped-up forearm.

“Here,” Bucky says, and takes the hand. He lifts it to his cheek. “Now you can, I bet.”

Steve huffs, but smiles, and this time hits his target. It’s a pretty light hit, but his target indulges him and pretends like the force has knocked him sideways.

Bucky catches himself with his left arm, and opens his mouth wide as if in shock. “Wow, you are _so_ strong,” he says. “A real Hercules, huh?” And puts the dorsum of his right hand to his forehead. Flutters his eyelashes.

“Yeah, come back here and I’ll show you strong.”

Bucky smiles, his lips twisted over to one side, and straightens. He picks Steve’s hand up again, but this time he kisses the palm. He leans in close to Steve—who seems to have blinked himself into a greater level of alertness—so that they’re eye level. Steve tugs his hand away to fist it in Bucky’s hair, gathering up mostly strands at the back, which will sting more when pulled. And he yanks him in for a kiss that ends too soon.

“I gotta get up,” Steve complains against his mouth instead of kissing him. “Your saliva’s shitty rehydration fluid.”

“I could work up a sweat. That’ll give you electrolytes.” 

Steve laughs and pulls Bucky’s head as far back as he can with the hair he’s still holding, and Bucky gasps for breath for a few seconds, body flailing at the beck and call of his heaving chest. Then he adjusts, and his eyelids laze. His mouth drops open. Blood moves, hot, toward his groin, and his dick pulses with it. It turns out he’s all live wire nerves today, ready to go off if Steve drags him around for even a few minutes more.

Steve shrugs the quilt off and raises himself up so that Bucky can see him better at this angle. Or so he can see Bucky head-on. Only the top teeth of his smile are visible, worrying at the edge of his lip. His eyes are definitely alert now. “Yeah,” he says. “When you’re surprised. I like that look.” He pulls again, and Bucky’s shoulders flinch upward, trapezius tensing. It reawakens some back pain, but that’s not much of a bother. It’s here because of something good, and so it’s easily absorbed into the cluster of ways he feels right now, looking at Steve and his smile, which broadened when Bucky flinched.

And anyway, like Bucky already said, this too shall pass.

Grip still firm, Steve orders in his grandest voice. “Look surprised more often. It’s the only look I’ve found on you that I like.”

“I’ll get right on that, your majesty.”

“See that you do.” Steve lets him go, and he droops, then fixes his posture, more for the sake of being kind to his spine than any good manners. But some good manners. Always _some_. “I do mean it,” Steve says. “I need to go hydrate.”

“Let me get you your water, Steve.” Maybe if he doesn’t have any of this stimulating conversation, he’ll fall back to sleep. For longer this time.

“No. Thank you. I’ll make you next time. I need to get my legs moving if I want to wake up right.” He squeezes one eye shut. None of the swagger of a wink; just a cute thing he does and has always done to be sweet.

As he passes Bucky, he ruffles his hair, and Bucky butts his head against the transitory hand. He tries to keep his sigh inaudible, watching a very much awake Steve walk to the kitchen in a very much awake way.

 

Things get complicated when you have his kind of hearing. Pretending not to understand spoken language to give someone privacy is one thing, but pretending not to hear him running the sink for five minutes straight while standing perfectly still and not having flicked on the light switch is another.

Once he’s folded the quilt up and returned it to the chair, Bucky busies himself with his laptop, putting the finishing touches on the new entry in his STUFF I OWN spreadsheet, and opening a .doc in which he types several lines of, “Don’t worry don’t worry don’t worry don’t worry don’t worry.” _Don’t worry. Think about the stuff you own and the stuff Steve owns. Worrying is a daytime activity._

Soft footsteps in the kitchen. A glass out of the cupboard. The sink turns off, and Steve returns, and sits cross-legged on the couch, looming directly behind Bucky, who says, “Hey, look, can you wait to loom until you’re done drinking that? You’re making me nervous. This is precious technology over here, even with your Clark Kent reflexes.”

“Fine. Fine. I’ll loom _later_. Just you wait.” He and his dangerous water shift to the other end of the couch. “Neurotic Nellie,” he mutters, and Bucky ignores that part, because holy moly, the hypocrisy on Steve.   

“I appreciate it. I know you’re too far away and you’re _keeping a tight grip_ on that water, but pretend I reached out to hold your hand.”

“Okay.” He sounds amused. “Pretend I held your hand back.”

“Yessir.”

Steve finishes the water and resumes his looming. He trails a finger up the back of Bucky’s neck. Bucky shivers, and his abs and pelvic floor muscles clench in a quick ripple. “Do anything fun after you knocked me out cold?” Steve asks.

“I ran off with your money and your wife. Sabotaged your good name.”

“That wasn’t very nice of you, was it?”

“No. You wanna do something about that, buddy?”

“Yes. But I need to decide what.” Steve pinches the fat and skin around Bucky’s jaw, gets his fingernails deep in there, and pulls like he thinks Bucky’s made of rubber.

Honestly, Bucky says, “Ow.” His second _ow_ turns to mush, and he feels a laugh somewhere in his throat, and on the unencumbered side of his face, he smiles, which tugs at the flesh Steve has got in his pincers.

“Oh, you think smiling’s allowed down there?”

“Maybe?” Bucky’s voice is high and thin.

“Hmm. That’s going on your list of discretions.” He releases his hold, and moves his hand to the top of Bucky’s head. “Along with sabotaging my good name.”

“Duly noted.” Reverently, Bucky touches his jaw where it smarts.

“I take that to mean you didn’t really do anything fun.”

“Oh! No, I did, actually. I was excited to show you.” He pushes the laptop away, gentle with it, and turns to face Steve. He kneels up and puts both elbows on Steve’s knees, and looks into his eyes. One of Steve’s eyebrows is raised. “I like you,” Bucky says.

“Yeah, I like you just fine too. This fun thing better be worth all the waiting you’re having me do.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. Remember how I wanted that Pac-Man machine? From Park Slope?”

“The ghost food box?”

“Yes, the ghost food box. A stunning summary.” Really, he’s impressed that Steve remembers anything from that conversation, it was so long ago. He’s also impressed by anyone who can remember what they ate for lunch. Or _if_ they ate lunch.

“I have a way with words.” He knocks twice in quick succession on Bucky’s jaw, next to his mouth, partially over where he pinched. “Go on.”

“So the guy sold it before I could proposition him, which, if we’re being honest with ourselves, was the greatest trauma of my life.”

“Of course.”

“But I found one on Ebay that’s barely pricier. It’s on its way here now.”

“Hold on. Ebay works that fast or you kept the best news of your life secret for several days? I’m asking honestly. I don’t know how Ebay works.”

“Neither. I’m exaggerating. I bought it just now.”

“That exaggerating’s gonna get you in trouble one day.”

“Is it? You should tell me more about that, please.”

“Nah, I’m too interested in this ghost food box now. You got a picture?”  

“I sure do.” He switches to the right tab and hands his laptop off to Steve, whose eyes go comically wide, then squint into triangles as his mouth turns down.

“This was a thousand dollars?”

“Nine-hundred and ninety-nine.” He shrugs his left shoulder. It probably sounds ridiculous to call that barely pricier than fifteen bucks, but when you’re siphoning from such a huge pool of money, what’s nine-hundred and eight-four dollars between arch enemies? “It’s all money from Hydra accounts. Bet they wouldn’t like their vintage machine buying a vintage machine of its own.”

“That’s good. That’s a good idea. You could also get one of those, uh. What was it you used to have?”

“An arm.”

Steve snorts. “The radio your family had, fucking smart alec. It was shaped like a church?”

“Cathedral. It was that Bakelite shit that looked like wood. Yeah, I think I could find one. Any other requests from the beautiful lady in the YMCA t-shirt?”

Steve smacks him on the back of the head, and keeps his hand there after, molded to the curve of Bucky’s skull. He makes his face look solemn. “I want an old Singer sewing machine. The kind that comes with a wooden case.”

“What, so you can repair the costume on your own?”

“I do that by hand. No, I want to make a big sack to put you in.”

“If we’re being honest, Steve, and we are: I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

“It’s not a joke. I want to make a big sack to put you in. I can tell you more about that later.”

“You can buy big sacks pre-made. Don’t let me fool you with all this vintage talk. We’re living in a great age for mass production.”

“I want your sack to be special. And reinforced.” His sock foot kicks softly at Bucky’s hip. “So if you want that too, you’ll find me an old Singer sewing machine.”

“Yeah. Yes, fine, anything you want. Hell, I’ll turn myself into a sewing machine if you want.”

“Oh, yeah? Is that something you…know how to do?”

“Sure. Singer Soldier reporting for duty. You can fill my mouth with needles and then, uh, wrap thread around my face.”  
  
“This sounds _very_ productive, Buck. You haven’t used a sewing machine even once, have you? Have you _seen_ a sewing machine? Do you know what a needle _is_?”

“Hey! I’ve seen you use a sewing machine.”

It had been a Singer, but not the kind in a wooden case. Steve always kept his eyes narrowed and his tongue between his front teeth while he worked. He made Bucky a monogrammed handkerchief once and looked angry and embarrassed about it until Bucky looked whatever uncontrollable way he looked, whatever warm-light-suffusing-his-whole-being way he looked, and then Steve bit the inside of his cheek and looked away.

“Geeze, Bucky,” he said. “It’s a _handkerchief.”_

“Yeah, well,” Bucky said, “I _like_ holding your _hand_ kerchief,” and Steve groaned with his mouth closed, and he—Well, where were they? In a lot of Bucky’s memories, he’s walking and talking in a blank space, or against a simple cartoon background, but probably soon after, Steve kissed him in a barrage of teeth, and, while Bucky’s having fun extrapolating, shoved the handkerchief in his mouth and made him hold his jaws prized apart so Steve could still admire his work while the fabric tickled Bucky’s soft palate and he did his best—.

“Yeah,” Steve says now, “You have. So you think you’d be smart enough to know that no thread gets wrapped around anything’s face.”        

“Nope. I don’t know anything about any of that complex, technical stuff. Lucky I have you here to take care of those things.”

“Yeah, that’s me. A whizz with the robots and the washing machines, and all manner of miracle doo-hickeys.” Steve makes his hand flat, and taps Bucky on the shoulder with the blade edge. In response, Bucky shifts from his disorganized sprawling, getting on one knee with the other leg squared up in front of him. He leans his elbow on that raised knee, and bows his head, but looks up at Steve through his eyelashes.

Steve says, “Thanks.” He wraps a hand around the underside of Bucky’s mandible just right. Tight pressure over the carotid and a thumb at his jaw’s hinge. He lifts him so that their eyes meet, and Bucky stays very still in his grip. “You can close your eyes,” Steve says, once it’s been long enough for Bucky to understand how Steve intends to look at him. Piercing; intent; all over.

Bucky closes his eyes. He gets looked at and held. His pulse beats, and when it’s his own hand there, that always makes him nauseous, but knowing that Steve is counting the beats along with him changes things. They’re in this whole disgustingly bodily Being Alive mess together.

Steve removes his hand, and swipes his middle finger over Bucky’s eyelids to tell him he should look again. Eyes open, Bucky asks a question with his face, a quick coordinated flicker of eyebrows and blinks and the corner of his mouth.

Steve nods his approval of whatever he saw while Bucky’s eyes were closed. “Good enough. No complaints.”

Bucky nods back. It’s all very serious.

Steve pokes at his carotid, the lightest of touches, and Bucky gasps and flinches, then laughs shakily at himself. Steve grins.

“I want to cuddle,” he says. “That good with you?”

Sometimes, when he hasn’t thought of the idea on his own or been warmed up for it, Bucky gets tetchy about being specifically cuddled. Cuddled for the sake of cuddling. So Steve’s started checking in about it more politely than he might about other stuff. Today, though, Bucky’s already feeling clingy and lazy, cheerful about his purchase, burning up all over from Steve’s small touches and his own concern, and ready to go easily.

“Good with me. Can I just, for a second--” He jerks his head to one side, and Steve gets it.

“Sure, yes.”

He taps his hand on Bucky’s shoulder again and Bucky moves out of position. He shuffles away from the couch and stretches his arms in front of him, cracking his back. “You want to get on the floor or me to get on the couch?”

“Couch. You’ve been a good boy. You get furniture privileges today.”

“I always have furniture privileges.” He clambers up next to Steve and drapes himself on him, circling him in his arms, nudging at the underside of Steve’s jaw with the top of his head. “You can’t trick me into thinking I don’t. I’m fucking onto you.”

“You’re not really fucking onto me. Your dick isn’t even touching me.”

“Ugh.” Bucky humps against Steve for a couple seconds to be contrary, then stills.

“But it’s true, you’re too smart a boy to fall for a trick like that.”

Bucky groans and makes himself smaller so he can shove his face into Steve’s chest, rubbing on his sweater, which is apparently cashmere despite being not much to look at, because Steve’s turned bourgeois on him. Probably his own fault, buying him those boots. He hugs Steve tighter.

Steve laughs in a quick breath. He starts to pet Bucky’s hair and says, “Sorry, sorry. I can stop being nice for now.”

“No. It’s okay.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. I really want you to be nice to me right now _if_ you really want to be. I want to hide my face against you while you do it. Please don’t make me repeat any of that.”

 “I won’t. You’re being so sweet. You don’t gotta do anything.”

He shakes his head against Steve’s chest. The cashmere is as gentle on his face as Steve is acting.  “Nothing? I don’t have to do anything?”

“That’s a good question. How’d you come up with such a good question?” 

He feels like he might start crying, which is ridiculous. From being pet and told that his question was good. He bumps his forehead against Steve’s sternum in some unmeant approximation of protest, and Steve responds by leaning backward, repositioning their ungainly bodies until they’re both lying down, Steve’s head on the arm of the couch, Bucky spread out on top with his arms still around Steve and partially crushed by their combined bulk.

Well, the right is partially crushed. The left registers their weight, but it’s detached, calculating. The way it sends signals to his brain is different when sensation might be intense enough to render him useless.

Steve’s made sure Bucky’s head is still on his chest for maximum easy face-hiding. “Thanks,” Bucky says, and Steve stiffens, stilling his hand so soon after resuming the petting. Possibly he thinks that Bucky is actually happily thanking him for the compliment, and who knows what kind of fucked up thing that would indicate about his state of mind. Bucky clarifies, “Thanks for the position. I like this. I can hear your heartbeat.”

“Oh.” He starts petting him again. “You’re welcome.” 

“Mmm.”

“If you really want to thank me, you can answer me this:” He pauses for a long time, like he’s building suspense.

Bucky gets impatient and says, “ _What_. Just ask.”

Steve twirls a lock of hair around his finger like spaghetti on a fork and yanks. The brief pain pulls a breathy grunt from Bucky’s mouth. Steve says, “You’re being so good for me. Don’t ruin it.”

Bucky bites at Steve’s sweater, sucking on it for a moment, eyes closed. He opens them again, though all he can see is beige fabric and a small slice of living room in his peripheral. “Okay, fine. _Please_ just ask.”

"What are you planning to do with a Pac-Man machine?"

Bucky laughs, and licks the bit of sweater he was sucking on. Steve scratches at his scalp. It’s kind of a stupid question, but Steve always likes to be sure about particulars.

Still, he can’t help making fun of him. "I'm gonna fuck it, Steve. I'm gonna stick my dick in the change return."

"I would watch that."

"Jiminy jillikers, I didn't see it coming. Did I used to say that? 'Jiminy jillikers?'"

"No, because you were a real person." He scratches Bucky’s scalp some more, and Bucky hums and pushes his head up to meet his hand.

"Interesting. Thought I might have.” He surprises himself with a yawn, saying around it, “If the machine works, I want to play it. If it doesn't, I want to open it up and look inside."

"So you want to fuck it."

"No, that's how _you_ would fuck a Pac-Man machine. And I'm not letting you fuck my Pac-Man machine."

Steve gasps. “I can’t believe you would keep me from ultimate pleasure.”

“Sorry. I don’t make the rules. Your toy’s toy isn’t your toy too. That’s mathematic fact.”

“Well. I guess you are better at math than I am.”

It’s objectively true, and so not too hard of a compliment to handle, but Bucky still grunts moodily and nuzzles the sweater, reveling in the permission to be an ingrate. 

Steve adds, “You _are_ right. You don’t make the rules.” He kisses the top of Bucky’s head.

 

 

 

 

 

Fucking the Pac-Man machine really wasn’t a part of the plan. It was a fun joke, but awkward in his imagination. What was he going to do, open himself up to sit on the joystick like an especially short dildo while the game beeped in the background? The question of where to put his limbs made him bored all by itself.

Then the machine was delivered.

He let the delivery guy truck it up into the elevator and through the apartment door, puffing and sweating the whole way, even though it pained him not to say, “Okay there, man, I’ll take it from here,” and lift the monstrous cardboard box over his head one-handed. Sure it would be killer on his spine, but it would be the polite thing to do.

No reason to call attention to his strength, though. The package is addressed to Harry Truman Farms, a name Steve made up for him when they were ten and eleven and used on him for a week straight because he thought it was the funniest joke anyone had ever told. So in front of the delivery guy, he sticks to being Harry Truman Farms: a man with deep shadows beneath his eyes, a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt (stolen from Steve’s laundry hamper), and only a perfectly normal and unremarkable level of strength.  

But once the delivery guy is gone, Bucky hefts the box onto his shoulder and moves it to the center of his bedroom floor. He uses the knife from under his pillow to slit the cardboard, peeling the machine like a potato.

With all the cardboard and Styrofoam and plastic thrown into various corners, well. There’s a Pac-Man machine in the middle of his bedroom, looking less out of place than he worried it might, but still definitely weird. Probably he should find some free wall space to push it up against.

But all he wants is to plaster himself to the machine’s side. 

It’s an instinct thing. A pull he feels in his shoulders. Like petting a stray cat without considering that it might bite, or sticking his tongue out to catch the rain. Or becoming full of want when he sees Steve chopping vegetables.

Steve isn’t home. Saturday mornings, he’s been volunteering to fix up a dilapidated local community center. Bucky goes with sometimes, but mostly takes pleasure in the knowledge that Steve is out in the world, enjoying himself. 

Bucky’s all alone with the Pac-Man machine and its animal magnetism.

He walks at it sideways. Sneaky, like a cartoon burglar. The bright yellow of the machine makes him feel like a bumblebee seeking pollen. Yellow, and the buzzing beneath his skin.  

First, he touches it with his left fingertips, metal to metal. It’s cooler than he expected, but of course, it’s not plugged in. He puts his palm into the touch now, pushing down as hard as he can without shoving the whole machine and scoring the floorboards.

Second hand down. Like he’s settling in for a vertical pushup. He tries a few, again having to bargain with his own overwhelming strength to keep everything in place even as he pushes his weight forward. Then, in a flash, the push-ups turn into plastering, like he really wanted. His body sprawls over the yellow, metal to metal and flesh palm to metal. Metal to soft cheek and sweatshirt and the toes of his sneakers and his knees through denim.  

He swears he can feel his heart beating against the metal too. But he always swears he can feel his heart.

He rubs his cheek on it. Up and down, then in circles. His skin catches enough to make a burr crop up in his throat. Spiky contentment. Rolling his face to the other side, he briefly touches the surface with his lips, and after a little rubbing with the right cheek too, he goes back to that. Kisses the machine in all its vintage grimy germy glory. Right on the “A” in “PAC-MAN.” His lower lip drags down, so smoothly, the metal and the spit-wet flesh. Another kiss, and he pulls back, and becomes cognizant of the fact that his dick is starting to stiffen in his jeans, about level with the blue ghost’s open, hungry mouth.

It seems a lot more hilarious in the moment than it maybe really is. His laughter is the silent kind that jumps his shoulders around and squeezes his eyes shut and gets him biting all over the collar of the sweatshirt.

The blue ghost is going to eat his dick, and then his dick is gonna have to start the game over.  

A sound escapes this time, a dumb, witchy cackle, and he breathes in, smiles hugely, leans his forehead against the game. He’s only part of the way hard, but that’s still pretty hard to get from kissing and touching an arcade game. No inanimate object that wasn’t wielded by another person has ever gotten him hard in his life.

He thinks.

An action figure of Steve that he bought three months after leaving Hydra doesn’t so much count. And that erection had made his body cold and filled his mouth sour with a rush of confusion. He hadn’t remembered yet who Steve was to him, not properly. 

Wanting this doesn’t make any sense, but he still does. Still wants to take comfort in shoving his body into a giant ghost food box computer. Throwing himself against it hard enough to bruise or scraping the bulge in his jeans over the machine’s corner, maybe, but mostly the shoving, the touching, the weirdly smooth kissing. And rolling around.

He gives in and rolls around, flails his body along the side of the machine and back again. It’s awkward, in the way that a lot of things are now; he might never totally let go of the suspicion that he’s being watched by _someone_. But he closes his eyes and keeps going, and gets dizzy, swimmy with the motion, and pauses with his face to the metal again, kisses again. He tries moaning against it, but that feels pointless. Not the kind of thing to do in this kind of situation.

Like a balloon deflating, he folds to the floor, and ends up lying on his side, wrapped around the game’s base. The corner does brush against his dick. He kicks a sneaker into the side to feel its hardness and hear the thump.

The thing is, Bucky doesn’t jerk off that often. He’s free to jerk off as he pleases as long as he tells Steve after, but doing so feels indulgent in a way he can’t get his head around as positive. Sometimes, he can justify the indulgence for himself. Like: he had a productive week at work; the internet is down; someone asked Captain America to go get a cat out of a tree and so he’s been kicking around the apartment alone for a few nights, and the whole talking to himself thing is getting out of control so why not lean into that and fuck himself too.

Realistically, rubbing all over an arcade game is a lot more indulgent than some simple jerking off, and sex with Steve is the most indulgent thing on earth, even if it’s indulgent for Steve too. Two people can steal priceless art together or eat their weight in chocolate cake together. And be so happy they could die because hey, look, at that other person stealing that Van Gogh! Look how beautiful his jaw is in the moon shining through the museum skylight! He’s so talented at ripping stuff off of walls!

That’s a positive kind of indulgence, though.

And this, maybe, kind of, is at least a quarter of the way to positive.

Experimentally, he flexes his hips, curling in on himself more and then straightening. The metal doesn’t provide much friction, but the idea of what he must look like is making up for it. Gentle pressure on his dick and the thought of himself in a pathetic ball on the floor, humping a bright yellow box. He splays his hands on it again, right hand on the box’s front and left hand on its side, and pushes his face against it, reveling in the resistance he gets. How hidden it makes him feel.

Oh, this is a huge waste of time, but oh, it’s okay anyway.

He shimmies so that his mouth is level with the box’s corner, and he bites down like it’s a bit. Closes his eyes. A stillness crops up inside him. He pushes himself closer to the box, rotating his hips more, and lets out a breathy whimper around the hard metal between his teeth and feels stupid about it. The box doesn’t give a shit about his noises, and that takes him out of the whole thing for a second.

Then he’s back in, banging his head gently on the metal instead of biting.

There’s a knock at his bedroom door. 

He rewinds the events of the afternoon in his head, trying to determine if it’s normal for Steve to be back right now. It is. Bucky’s the abnormal one in this situation.

He clears his throat, but doesn’t make any move to get off the floor. “Um, yeah. Hey, there, Steve. How’d the community center go?”

“Fine. Ellen’s teaching me about wiring. There are some areas it’s safest for me to fix up, just in case.”

“I hate that, Steve. Don’t get electrocuted.”

“It’ll be fine. Minor shocks at most.” A pause, while Steve taps his foot and shifts his weight. “Can I come in? I miss you. Or not. Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”   

Bucky looks down at his erection, where his hips have been unconsciously rubbing him off on the side of the game, and says, “Uh, you can. But. Well.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh. Something pretty weird is happening in here.”

There’s a long silence. “Do you want to elaborate?”

“It’s easier if you come see for yourself. Just be prepared.” No reason to be ominous. He hurriedly adds, “Nothing’s wrong. It’s only weird.”

Pushing the door open on unoiled hinges, Steve says, “I’m always prepared for anything.” He stops with his hand still on the doorknob. “Well then.”

“Like I said.”

Steve walks further into the room and closes the door behind him. Like the couch or the icebox might wander in and interrupt while they’re indisposed. “I’ll admit, I’ve been more prepared.”

“I don’t completely blame you.” He gives the box a half-hearted hump, and it’s like pop rocks going off throughout his body.

"So this _is_ why you wanted it."

"No, I wanted it for a lot of reasons. I want you for a lot of reasons too. For instance: want to watch?" 

“You know I do.”

“I do know you do. And that’s one of the many reasons I want you. Not everyone would be interested in watching a traumatized, butchered centenarian treating an arcade game to a good time.”

“Well, I’m a man of fine taste.”

“Oh, that’s what I haven’t done. What a ridiculous oversight.” He sticks his tongue out and licks the metal. A long, luxurious lick, the taste of it sharp and strong. He crawls around to the front so he can lap at the slit for quarters, teasing at it with the tip of his tongue. Then he turns to smile at Steve, who’s watching him with his hands tight on his hips, his eyes narrowed, his mouth open. Keeping eye contact, Bucky licks another path up the machine.

Steve clears his throat, and Bucky settles, sitting with his knees drawn up and his head leaning against the machine. Steve says, “What’s appealing about this? I’m actually not making fun of you. I’m curious.”

“It’s not _that_ different from what you do to me, is it?”

“What?” Steve looks startled enough that Bucky starts wondering how he can make it up to him. He hadn’t meant it. “No, it’s not, and you know that. It’s very different. If you were using the machine correctly, playing the game, you know. Um. Eating the ghosts. _And_ the dots. Progressing to the higher levels. That’s what I do to you.”

Bucky closes his eyes and droops his head, deliriously happy; he could fall apart. “That’s so sweet.”

“I thought it was. Maybe I _will_ change my name to Sweet Rogers.”

“Um. I won’t _tell_ you not to, even if you might hit me for it. But I’ve gotta suggest you don’t.”

Steve raises his right hand, firming his jaw, a clear intimation that he might hit Bucky anyway, because he’s a sweetheart. But he would have to lean a lot further down, and they’d both have to make sure the force wouldn’t just slam Bucky into the metal and knock him out cold. A lot of angles and logistics, both of which Bucky is excellent at, but, God. Steve looks so gorgeous when he’s threatening.

Bucky smiles at him, huge and goofy. Squinting and chewing his lip. Steve squares his shoulders more, settling into the pose, so Bucky blows him a kiss. Steve looks away. He’s blushing. He moves the hand held in the air to scrub through his hair and hide his eyes. Then it drops to his side and he straightens his back and nods his head side-to-side before settling into something more casual. He raises his eyebrows and smiles with the left of his open mouth.

“As I was saying. What’s the appeal? It’s not like what I do to you. I promise.”

“I know. Sorry. I actually don’t know what’s appealing to me. I only said that because I hoped you knew.”

“I really don’t. But I like this. I like you so turned on you’re reduced to loving on something that can never love you back.”

“Well, that’s depressing! I think it loves me back.”

“You attached to thinking that?”

“Why, you want to dirty talk at me about how it doesn’t?”

 “Yes. But I can dirty talk at you about something else if you’d prefer.”

“Yeah, I want to see your improv chops. How’re you gonna make it mean and fucked up that the machine _does_ want me? I’m all ears, guy.” 

“You bossing me around?”

“I’m angelically requesting. Please, Steve. Please tell me how degrading it is for me to receive the affections of this lovely metal gentleman. It’ll make me really happy and you’ll be really great at it.”

Steve smiles and tilts his head forward like he’s about to charge. He squares his shoulders in the beat-up denim jacket he didn’t bother taking off when he got in, and he holds his arm out in front of him in an expansive gesture. Stagey as he slips into himself.

“This is cute,” he says, and Bucky’s abs tighten with an almost-laugh.  “A couple of big, ugly objects keeping each other warm. No, that’s mean to the machine. It’s not as ugly as you. Maybe if we painted you up in bright colors. Stuck a big red ball to the end of your dick, like a clown nose. Then you and your little boyfriend could match.”

Bucky laughs more, in a wild bark like a seal. “You’re insane.” He stands up, and still looking at Steve, licks the big red ball like a clown nose, circling it with his tongue, then down the stick. He rubs his face on the control panel.

“Not as insane as that machine, to let you rub your filthy body all over it. I mean, Judas Priest, where’s that thing been? What’s been inside you lately, huh? What have you rolled in just to make some guy happy?”

“’Some guy?’” Bucky lifts his head, and moves around to the side of the machine again, where he licks at it some more. “Who’s some guy? What’s his name?”

“I don’t know, because you don’t know. You didn’t even bother to ask before letting him do whatever he wanted. You think the machine’s just giving you a pity fuck? You know, I don’t think so. Anyone else, sure. But this sees itself in you. A big box that you put money in and out comes a little bit of fun.” 

Bucky’s laughing uncontrollably, yeah, bouncing breath and shivers racing upward from his ribcage, mouth in a twisty, lip-biting smile. But also his abs are tensed, his thoughts turned soft and tender, the whole core of his body warmed. His hips circle like he _is_ riding the joystick. He grinds his chest against the metal, and his nipples are hard enough that even through the sweatshirt, he feels it, little jumps of pleasure.

“Fun comes out of me? What does that even mean?”

“What do you think it means?”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“And _I_ want to hear _you_ say it. Now which one of us do you think is going to win that fight?” He underlines the threat by taking a step closer.

“Okay, I’m sorry, you’ll win. I. I’m fun for you.”

“Oh, great explanation. No wonder people cringe when you open your mouth.”

Bucky’s face heats, and he automatically ducks his head. He sticks his hand in his hair and keeps it there, making a small ponytail to ground himself. “I’m fun because I’m a toy for you to play with. I. It’s fun to make me react to things and that’s why you have me? Am I right?”

“Close enough. I guess. You’re just like a game. I play with you, and I beat you, and I write my name on you so that everyone knows I got the highest score. You own the game. I own you. Correct?”

“Yeah. Correct.”

“And I turn you off and unplug you every night. And every morning I turn you back on and get back to playing with you and beating you.”

Bucky laughs at that too, even as it’s fucking him up to imagine it. Steve whispering to him that his day is over and powering him carefully down, putting him somewhere safe until the next morning. Reliably, always, like clockwork: the very next morning. Overwhelmed, he gets on the floor again, shoving himself against the machine’s base to try to grind his dick into it. He thinks about whether he should take it out, take it in his hand, pet the head along the metal.

But Steve says, “If I were to take over the show here a little, how would that make you feel?” and that’s the best idea of all.

“Hi, Steve. James Buchannan Barnes. It’s nice to meet you.”

“I’m gonna whip you with a wet towel.”

“Now it’s _great_ to meet you.”

“Buck. It was a real question. I did interrupt. You only want me to heckle, that’s fine.”

“Real hecklers throw things. Any thoughts on that?”

“Answer me plainly. Okay for me to take over or no?”

“Yes. Yes, please. It’s not a rental, you know. I can be alone with it any time I like. Please interrupt to the extent you’d rather.”

“I don’t know. You don’t sound like you need it, just want it. I don’t want you getting spoiled.”

“Please, Steve. I need you to step in so bad. I’m too small and stupid to run the show on my own, okay? I need a guiding hand.”

“That’s what I thought. Thank you for admitting it. Now stop moving until I say otherwise.”

He isn’t moving, but he focuses hard on continuing not to move. Steve turns one leg out to the side. He lunges a little, then straightens. Does it a few more times. Making Bucky wait, but staring at him, his face hard except for the tiny, sharp smile.

He lunges for the last time. “Get your dick out.”

Still curled on the floor and half-pressed to the machine, Bucky fumbles with unzipping his jeans. With some annoying maneuvering, he pulls his erection out of the flap in his underwear and through the fly. Metal teeth scrape at the sides, and he hisses. It makes him turn toward the machine more, enough that he can drag the head of his dick along the surface and choke on a whimper.

Steve snaps his fingers. “You know what, Buck? I don’t remember saying you could do that. I want your dick _out_ , Buck. I don’t want it useful. Just let me look.”

Bucky pulls his dick away from the metal and flattens his back to the machine so Steve has a good view. “You like what you see?”

“Well, it’s prettier than your face. Gold star for that.”  

Bucky smiles and covers his face with his left hand.

“ _Hey_. I said it was ugly; I didn’t say to hide. This isn’t the time for being coy.”

Bucky puts his left hand behind his back instead. “Fine. Sorry.”

“You know, you’re terrible at following instructions today. What’s going on?”

“Not sure. I guess I just woke up stupider than usual.”

“See, that troubles me. There wasn’t much more down you could go.”

Slowly, Bucky slides down the machine’s side until he’s lying all the way on the floor with his head against it. “Now I’m all the way down.”

“Okay, you know? You’re right. I don’t remember you being this stupid yesterday. What am I supposed to do about that?”

He lifts just his head. His neck complains. “Wouldn’t my suggestion be stupid?”

“Yes. But I have an idea.” He approaches until he’s standing with one leg on either side of Bucky’s hips. He tightens them around him. He’s glaring. “You’re a disappointment today, but that’s okay. I know _just_ what to do about that.” He bends down, but pauses, hand hanging in the air seven inches from the tip of Bucky’s nose. 

“Everything good?” Bucky asks.

“You don’t want me to touch, say so. I don’t have to. I’ve got you wrapped around my finger either way.”

“Do touch. Touch me, please.” It’s tempting to sit up, to force his head into that dangling hand, but soon enough, he’ll have what he wants. “I want to be wrapped around your literal finger.”

And then Steve’s stepping away, no longer bracketing him. Bucky grunts in displeasure, but it’s only temporary; Steve’s hand descends into his hair, and he’s dragging his upper half off the ground. Bucky moves quickly to follow so his hair won’t get yanked out, shifting onto his knees, bracing himself against the machine with his left hand.

Steve stops dragging when Bucky's face is flush with the coin return. His right elbow’s on the floor, taking a lot of his weight, and he’s hunched over, but Steve is too, to maintain his grip. Bucky’s legs are uselessly tangled off to the side.

“Take your tongue out.” He does. “You’re going to eat him out for me, aren’t you?” Steve puts a boot on the back of Bucky’s hand. He doesn’t press at all, but the texture of the sole there makes Bucky’s skin jump around pleasantly. “You’re going to eat that hole out nice and careful and sloppy, right? You might be stupid today, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a hard worker.”

Bucky doesn’t answer, just pants into the machine’s opening. Steve rubs the boot sole over his skin, and some loose grit comes dislodged.

“Right?” he repeats.

“Hell, yes, Steve.”

“Then what the fuck are you waiting for?”

He’s a hard worker. He always has been. He stops waiting for anything.

His tongue pushes slowly at the flap over the opening, and once he’s in, he opens his mouth wider and closes his eyes. Behind him, he feels Steve move into a crouch, so that he can keep his grip on Bucky’s hair more comfortably. It hurts every time Bucky changes the angle of his head to lap at a different corner of the opening. Both because of the yanking in his scalp and because the flap falls down when he attends to the lower corners, and its edge digs into his tongue’s flesh.  

Steve starts crooning in his ear, and just his breath makes Bucky moan into the hole. “Oh, there we go. _Good_ boy. So filthy, putting your mouth in there. What else I could make you do with that thing, I wonder?”

Bucky says, “You could—” with the intention of finishing, _make me do whatever you wanted,_ but Steve shuts him up by sinking his fingernails into his scalp and smushing his face into the machine. One nostril squeezes flat and his mouth is stopped from its work, off to the side of the slot.

“No. I said, ‘I wonder,’ not, ‘Share your dumbass opinion with me when I gave you a task to focus on.’”

Bucky says, “I’m sorry,” but with half his mouth shoved into the metal, it comes out in a strangely musical slur.

Dear, long-suffering Steve exhales, and tugs Bucky’s face away from the machine only to knock his forehead against it. “Obviously I can’t make you use it to talk; Christ, that was unintelligible. I hope you said something nice. You won’t like it if I found out you didn’t.”

He nods up into Steve’s grip, tiny motions. 

“I wonder if anyone would pay me to have you lick their boots clean, huh?”

“Maybe if you, uh.”

“Yes? Maybe if I what. Even though I already told you I’m not looking for suggestions, moron.”

“Sorry. If you let them have a free trial maybe. Like a gym membership.”

“No. No one gets to have you for free but me. Isn’t that right?”

“Yeah. Everyone else has gotta make it worth my while.”

“That’s right. Even that machine better be planning to spit some fucking change out of that return soon or I might be pretty mad.”

“Aw, leave him alone. He knows you’re top dog.”

“I’ll think about it. You can even give him one last lick. Come on.” He redirects Bucky’s head, and overly aware of the slurping sound and his own spit getting everywhere, Bucky circles his tongue around the whole change return a final time.

“Okay,” he says, moving his mouth so he can be heard right. “He and I have an understanding now.” 

“That better be true. Up.”

He stands, mostly propelled by Steve’s hand in his hair and the other hand under his armpit. As he wobbles, legs partially asleep, Steve switches to wrapping both arms around him and tugging him close so they’re front-to-front. He walks them toward the machine, and Bucky bends backward, the joystick digging into his spine.

“This fine for your back?” Steve asks.

“External pain’s a good distraction. ‘S good. I’m good. Please, Steve.”

“I decide if you’re good. Don’t get so cocky.” He pushes on him more, and the joystick’s insistent at his back, like a gun shepherding him out of a room.

“Wait shit no sorry sorry I can’t have the—”

Steve backs them up so Bucky’s standing straight. He looks into Bucky’s eyes and moves some hair behind his ears for him. “Can’t have the what? What do you need different?”

“Just, um.” He hides in Steve’s shoulder and closes his eyes, pulling a private disgusted face at himself. “Can’t have the joystick poking into my back. Everything else is fine.”

“Okay.” He tugs gently on Bucky’s earlobe. “That’s the most minor setback on earth. You’re good. We good?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Everything’s good.” To demonstrate, he tries to hump Steve’s thigh. Harsh friction of denim along the underside of his dick.

Steve takes him by the shoulders and pushes him away. “Everything except you apparently. Get a fucking hold of that thing, Buck.” Before Bucky can move his hand to his dick, he clarifies, “ _Not_ literally.” Steve grabs his wrists up, holds them in one hand in front of Bucky’s chest. “How do I solve a problem like Buckria?”

“You hate that movie.”

“It’s an irritating movie. You’re an irritating slut. What’s your point?”

“Uh. No good point, apparently. Please carry on.”

“Ask nicer.”

“Please, Steve. Please keep going. _So much please_. Thank you in advance for hurting me. I need it and it means so much to me that you might give me what I need. It means everything.”

“Well, someone’s a drama queen today.” He drops Bucky’s wrists. “Turn around.”

Steve flattens himself against Bucky’s back, both arms around his throat, locking him in place like a choke collar. Bucky stares at the points of his elbows. At the golden hair on his arms where they emerge from his rolled-up jacket sleeves. He sinks into the hold.

“One thing,” Steve says. “You’re _positive_ it’s just the joystick poking into your back? Not the joystick in general?”

He eyes the joystick. It doesn’t look anything like a gun. He focuses on the stupid clown nose end of it. “Eighty-seven percent positive.”

“Well, if it’s a thirteen-percent situation, fight me on it. You got that?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I’d like a clearer confirmation, please.”

“Yes, Steve. I’ll fight you. I’ll make sure you know.”  

 “Glad we got that settled.”

His throat is released, and Steve ducks down and threads his arms through his legs, nudging them wider. When he straightens up, Bucky comes with him, lifted off the floor, Steve’s forearms supporting the backs of his thighs, his chest a solid surface for Bucky to fall back against in surprise.

“You already ate him out.” Steve pinches his inner thigh, close to his knee. “Now you get to suck him off. Doesn’t that sound fun?”   

“Bundles.”

“Well, you better be focusing on his enjoyment, not yours, or I might get a little testy.”

“Oh no,” Bucky deadpans. “Don’t get testy.”

Steve bites the back of his neck. Teeth still gripping him, he walks them a couple inches closer, so Bucky’s knees bang into the machine. “Be good. Lean down. Suck.”

Without Steve’s chest holding him up, he feels just short of vertiginous. Elated with how little Steve is doing to keep him in the air, the lifeline of his forearms steady, but still only forearms. Hands, too, if he’s being pedantic, wrapping around so the fingertips brush the tops of his thighs, the hold sweetly firm.

The joystick’s short enough that he’s pretty much doubled over when it first touches his lips. So when he slides down all the way, stretching his mouth around the bulbous head, the slight flexing of his abdominal muscles brushes against his dick and makes him whimper.

“Yep. Just like that, Buck. All the way in. Shouldn’t be hard.”

 He bobs his head up and down, making sure to kiss the control panel each time. The thing might be short, but his jaw aches with how broad it gets at the top. It scrapes against his teeth. He feels some drool slide down his chin and land on the buttons.

“I wish I could see this from all angles.” Steve tightens his grip, nails and knuckles both indenting Bucky’s inner thighs, and with his right hand, he turns it into a scratch, slow and deep to make up for the lack of skin-to-skin that would let him leave marks. “You whoring yourself out for a hunk of metal, sucking on its ugly cock. I mean, I already _knew_ you had no self-respect, obviously, but Christ. Is there _any_ limit to how much you’ll debase yourself?”

At that, Bucky’s dick jerks, and again when he slides down and his abs flutter against it. He’s too hasty, and almost makes himself gag, but eases off, back to spreading his lips obscenely around the bright red ball.

“See, I don’t think so. Any normal person, I’d have to force him _a little bit_ into doing this, but you’re so easy for it you didn’t even question me before getting your mouth around that thing. It’s adorable.” He scratches him again. “Hang on. Don’t move.”

Bucky stills with his lips halfway down the ball. Then Steve’s shifting him, slithering his right arm out from under him at the same time as he moves his left arm so that it fully encompasses both thighs, holding them closed, and slanting the whole operation down and to the left so that their combined center of gravity is more ideal.

“Perfect.” Steve sounds impressed with himself, and Bucky laughs around the joystick. His mouth is so full he just makes noises like an air pump. “Stay there. Here we go.” And he covers the back of Bucky’s head with his hand and pushes him the rest of the way down and keeps him there.

The joystick’s thick head rests perfectly at the back of his mouth, and he almost gags again, but not wanting to disappoint Steve, he tries hard to breathe through his nose, to still himself.

 “Good boy, there we go.” Steve’s splayed fingers play with his hair, scrunching it up. “You’re going to stay there and you’re going to suck on that until I decide otherwise.” Either he has a better view from this angle or he’s just guessing, because he says, “I don’t see you sucking. When I say ‘suck,’ I mean, ‘suck,’ not, ‘take a nap down there.’ I’m a busy man.”

So Bucky hollows his cheeks and sucks on the joystick, breathing through how much more he wants to gag now, involuntarily massaging the underside of the ball with his flexing tongue. He’s tearing up, and he doesn’t let himself blink it away. Mostly, he’s silent, but then his throat makes a deep, wet sound, followed by loud slurping, and Steve laughs at him.

“Fuck, that’s repulsive.” He uses Bucky’s hair to pull his head off, and he sets him on the ground, facing away from the machine. His legs wobble for a second, and the drool that’s been pooling in his mouth—what he didn’t leave behind on the joystick—drips loose from his lips before he can think to stop it. His eyes are still damp. He fills his lungs, lets it out. Grins.

Steve grins too. He walks closer, so that Bucky’s backed up against the machine, but before they can risk revisiting the Joystick Feels Like a Gun situation, he takes Bucky by the left bicep and by a small piece of his hair and drags him off to the side.

Bucky’s shocked enough to whine, and Steve grunts. “So fucking pitiful, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I am.”

“Well cut it out. I’m not interested in getting an invitation to your pity party.”

“But I got them custom-made.”

Steve uses the hair in his grasp to pull Bucky’s ear to his mouth. “Well, I got you custom-made too. Now which of us do you think spent more money?”

“Me, probably. Unless you got ripped off.”

Steve laughs. “Nah. I invested a lot in getting such a useful little fucktoy. Even if it is pretty dumb. Why would I need a smart fucktoy to play with?”

Bucky giggles, pulling his lower lip between his teeth and trying to draw most of his chin in too. Steve’s face is soft, fond, and his grip on Bucky’s hair tightens.

“I think I want your dick away again.”

“You putting it back or me?”

“You. I gotta hold you in place. Make sure you don’t get any stupid ideas about leaving.”

“I would never.” He tries to tuck his straining, sensitive dick back in, and tries not to focus on how awful that’s going to be, but—“Uh, actually. Sorry, not to tell you what to do or anything, but I can’t do this with you holding my arm still.”

“Say please.”

“Please let go of my arm long enough for me to put my dick back in my jeans.”

“Ugh. Fine.”

Quickly, afraid that if he keeps his hands on himself for too long, he’ll go off right there, Bucky spreads his fly open, gets his dick—the head of which has gotten a lot slicker than last time he checked—back into his boxers, and zips and buttons his jeans, scrunching his face up as he does, and breathing like he’s crying, even if he isn’t really. The pain is tight and insistent and makes him want to beg to hump Steve’s shin. But from the evaluating way Steve is staring at him, he obviously has other intentions.    

He pats Bucky’s dick through his jeans. “That’s better. All safe and sound.”

Bucky groans. “I can’t—Please don’t. Don’t touch me if I can’t come, please.”

“You’re so fucking needy.” But Steve takes his hand away, and goes back to holding Bucky how he was before, by the bicep and the hair. He pulls him further from the machine, more by the hair than the arm, making him yelp and struggle for a moment.

When they’re apparently where he wants them to be, he lets go of Bucky’s arm, and puts that hand in front of his mouth. Bucky thinks about it, then kisses the back. Steve backhands him, with a dull thud that leaves his cheekbone and jaw aching.

“Put your arms behind your back. Cross your wrists.”

“You got it.”

“You gotta leave them there, okay? I don’t care why you might not want to.” And he uses his leg to knock Bucky’s out from under him.

He almost goes to break his fall, shoulders flexing, but stops himself, and Steve keeps his face and upper body off the floor for him, still holding him up by that chunk of hair, and Bucky yells, hoarse and then high, finally starting to cry for real, even if it’s only two real tears, rolling slowly down. His pelvis and abs contract wildly, and Steve lets strands of hair loose from his fingers, and as the chunk holding him up gets smaller, the pain gets more insistent, and in a thin voice, he finds himself saying, “Help.”

Steve angles his head up to check on him, furrows his brow and cocks his head.

Bucky smiles; it must look awful. “Just asking the studio audience. Please, I’m fine, please. Continue, please.”

“Okay.” He keeps Bucky’s head angled up. But help you with what, sweetheart? I can’t just keep going if you need _help_.”

“I was just _asking_.”

“Oh were you? Then ask me. Hey, Buck, I can’t help if you don’t tell me what you need help with right? Can I?”

“No. Maybe. I mean, you can do whatever you want, but. Um.” For hesitating, he gets Steve’s fingernails scratching slow marks down the side of his face, which doesn’t feel too bad, and then along the bony curve of his chin, which is a sudden burn, and he panics, and squeals, “I need you to help me do a good job.”

Steve takes his nails away. He sighs. “Well, I can _try_ , but I don’t exactly have the best raw material to work with.” He stretches to gather up the fat at Bucky’s inner thigh, and squeezes it, fingers solid as forceps. Then Bucky’s falling to the floor, head dizzy and light, Steve no longer holding onto his hair. He lands on his left shoulder, the sound against the wood a clang that makes him grit his teeth, and he verbalizes, “Oof,” just as Steve’s rolling him onto his back, hovering over him on all fours, wolf-like in the hungry, open set of his face.  

“Hey, there” Bucky says. He wants to trace a finger down the bridge of Steve’s nose, to kiss his heavy brows softly. But more than that, in this moment, what he wants is whatever Steve’s planning. So he settles for tipping his head back and smiling with the right side of his mouth, so that maybe Steve will want to kiss him and maybe Steve won’t.

Steve says, “Hey, there. Give me a second.” He gets up on his knees and stuffs a hand into the pocket of his jeans. Like an afterthought, he dangles his other hand above Bucky’s face and says, “Here. If you need something to kiss. You have that look.”

He and his look kiss the hell out of Steve’s hand. He mouths at the side, sucking on the skin and grazing it with his teeth; Steve tastes salty, but also like old metal, now, and Bucky tries to kiss each of Steve’s knuckles, but Steve stops him.

Steve lies his thumb down the middle of Bucky’s tongue and applies pressure, opening him up, digging into the vulnerable underside of his jaw with the other fingers. “You need something in there, huh?” he says, and Bucky’s hips pump at the minute jump of his own tongue against Steve’s thumb when he tries to moan agreement.

“Asked you a question, Buck. You need something in there?”

Bucky exhales, consumed again by how his tongue flexes, strains, and he swings his right arm in a long-ago nonverbal signal for _Commence firing._

Steve raises an eyebrow and squints, then figures it out, and laughs. “You really do need something in there; you’re much funnier when you can’t talk.” And he pulls his wallet out of his pocket and wedges it between Bucky’s teeth. Corner-first, so that more can fit. Perched in there deep but delicately, like flowers in a vase.

Steve’s wallet is full of business cards and membership cards to a million different things that he has no real involvement in, but the absence of any cash makes it thin enough that Bucky’s jaw doesn’t hurt. It’s a thin, insistent presence, soft; his lips can’t quite touch it, and it’s mostly tasteless in the one spot where it rubs against his tongue.  The sensation of something hanging out casually in his mouth, kept there only by gravity, makes him hold his eyes wide.

Steve takes the uppermost corner of the wallet in his fingers and wriggles it back and forth, smirking, and Bucky feel his own face go all pleading, all sad-eyed. Steve stops the gentle, embarrassing movement and forces the wallet in further. He lets go the moment Bucky starts to gag, to buck up, and the wallet slides back into an easily handled position all on its own.

With his thumb, Steve flattens the tip of Bucky’s nose. Turns Bucky into a pug, and all Bucky can do is stare up at him helplessly, rubbing his tongue over the leather, frustrated that it doesn’t taste the way leather is supposed to. Steve doesn’t sweat on his wallet the way he does in his jackets.

His nose is granted the gift of springing back into its normal shape. Steve’s voice in his ear, gentle like he’s easing him from sleep: “Bucky. If I find tooth marks in the leather later, I’m belting you until you bleed.”

Instantly, Bucky gets like a lollipop left in the sun. Hard and sticky and melting and hopefully, maybe sweet. It’s heady and it’s frustrating and it makes him whine around the wallet while taking care not to clamp his mouth down.

Steve kneads him like he’s made of clay. He shoves the Mickey Mouse sweatshirt up so that he can directly squeeze the flesh of Bucky’s hips, working his thumb into him there. Leaving the sweatshirt rucked up, he moves down to pinch at his thighs in big patches, leaving him hot and sore. He rolls Bucky onto his side and grabs at his ass with one hand. He toys with him like that for a few moments, flattening his cheeks and then squishing as much flesh up as he can through the tight denim and pulling it around in little circles.

He resettles Bucky on his back, and Bucky feels flushed, whimpering around the wallet, his legs squirming.

“Yep.” Steve puts his hands on his hips and glowers down at Bucky. “This is some real second-rate raw material right here. Just like I thought.”

Bucky can’t help it, and he shudders as he does it, but he _really really_ wants, after pulling the wallet out of his mouth, wet but unmarked, to say, “Third rate. Fourth rate. Don’t boost my ego. I need it how it is.”

“Don’t contradict me. If I want to fucking call you second-rate, I will.” He prods at the inside of Bucky’s thigh, fingertip bruising against the muscle, brushing so close to his balls, and Bucky keens and sucks in small breaths.

He whines, “ _Steve,_ ” and Steve responds by slipping his hand under the sweatshirt to grope at Bucky’s pecs, then leans in and bites his stomach, pulling his flesh up in his teeth, and the sound Bucky makes is delicate and aching, the pressure of tears building up behind his eyes.

Steve stops biting. He soothes the pain with his fingers, then pulls the sweatshirt back down. He gets on his hands and knees over Bucky’s body again, face like the sun glaring down, and Bucky’s helpless to shield himself. To not get blinded by how beautiful, urgent, burning Steve looks with his eyes furious and devouring like this.

“I have a question, Buck.”

“Shoot.” His voice comes out smaller, less casual than he means it to.

“If I put something in your mouth, do you take it back out again? Or if I decide that your mouth’s a hole to keep my wallet in, do you shut up and be a good little handbag?”

“I know.”

“’I know’ isn’t an answer to that question. I’m looking for an _answer_ to my _question_. Is that clear?”

“Yes. I. I shouldn’t have taken it out. I should have been your handbag. Pocketbook. Purse. Something you can carry around over your shoulder and leave by your seat when you go to a coffee shop—”

“Hey, hey. Not that I’m not into this line of thinking, but I think you’re getting distracted there.”

“Oh.” He grins. “Yeah, I am. I’m sorry. It was stupid of me to take it out. I wasn’t thinking.”

“You’re never thinking. And yet you usually manage to follow the rules at least halfway acceptably.”

Bucky’s mouth twitches down in refusal of the compliment. Lovely Steve ignores him. “I’m really, really sorry, Steve.”

“I know. Here, let me give you something easier to hold on to.” He takes a credit card out of the wallet and flips it around between his fingers like a knife. “Think you can be good if I stick this in you?”

“Like an ATM?”

“Sure. Arcade game. ATM. Bubblegum machine. Hmm. You gonna be a good ATM for me? Not gonna charge me any extra fees?”

“I’d never charge you extra fees. I’d never charge you anything.”  

Steve puts the card between his teeth. “Feel free to bite this time.”

He does. It’s significantly simpler to hold in his mouth than the wallet. Kind of soothing, like a pen or a cigarette. He plays with it, biting, flicking his tongue, sucking it in and out, and Steve watches him. Everything’s quiet and peaceful, Bucky just there to be watched and to hold onto Steve’s card. Steve drags a knuckle over his lower lip. He dips a fingertip into Bucky’s mouth alongside the card and pokes around at the underside of his tongue.

The Steve takes his finger out. Then Steve’s hand is on his left wrist.

“Up,” he says, and Bucky’s being dragged, and made to stand with one leg stretched onto the game controls, the other leg on the ground, the front of his body forced up against the slender, jutting edge of the machine’s side.

Steve reaches around and slips the credit card out of Bucky’s mouth. “We’re done with this,” he says and tosses it over his shoulder. By the sound, it lands somewhere in the corner where Bucky keeps the clothes that stress him out. Steve shows no signs of going to get it, draping his arm over Bucky’s shoulder and spreading his palm over his pec.

“Steve!” Bucky whines as Steve finds his nipple and fondles it through the sweatshirt. “What the fuck? Why did you just—” Steve circles the flexed joints of his finger over the nipple in a barely-there motion, and Bucky grunts “—throw it? Come on.”

“It wasn’t interesting to me anymore.”

“Your wallet is right there!”

“Did I ask where my wallet was?”

“Probably not. But I wouldn’t trust my memory on the subject.”

Steve hums against the side of Bucky’s neck, and Bucky takes a steadying breath through his nose. He angles his head so that he can rub his cheek against Steve’s hair.

Steve lets him for a moment, then pulls back. “So if I were to pry you away from your big metal boyfriend—”

“I’d miss you!”

“Shut up. I’m not the one with all this bullshit.” He flicks Bucky’s left bicep without thinking it through, and grunts a little in pain.  

“You’re the Man of Steel,” Bucky says in a breathy voice, batting his eyelashes even though Steve can’t see him. But Steve knows, of course Steve knows, and he puts a hand between Bucky’s shoulder blades to shove his chest down on top of the game controls, and smacks him on the back of each thigh.

Through his jeans, Bucky processes only _force_ and _warm_ , and he bites his tongue, lifts his head. “ _Steve._ ”

“If I were to take this _show on the road_ —”

“Yes. Yes, all good. Yes, please. Like I said. It’s not a rental. It’ll wait for me. It’s in my fucking spreadsheet.”

“Cute. You’re both in spreadsheets.”

“I never made you yours.”

“It’s true, and I’m very angry about it. See?” He yanks on Bucky’s right forearm, tumbling him to the ground.

He lands positioned like the beginning of a push-up, and holds himself that way until told to move. Steve rests his boot on the back of his neck, skims it down to the middle of his back. It’s there that he applies pressure, forcing Bucky down the incremental bit he has left to go, and Bucky takes a shallow breath. Moans. High and clear and needing.

“Give me thirty.”

“Really?”

“Find out.”

Bucky pushes up against Steve’s weight, but Steve has no intention of making it easier for him, and he has to grunt and struggle, even as his left arm gives him the extra power to lift partway up, then, right arm trembling just barely, all the way.

“You’re terrible at this. What the fuck did they teach you in boot camp?”

“Not sure. I got kind of miffed obeying people who weren’t you.”

“Shut up.” Laughter swims beneath the surface of his voice. “Lie back down and go where I kick you.”

Bucky collapses more dramatically than necessary, and Steve slips a boot beneath his chest and flips him over like a pancake, with some assistance on Bucky’s part to make the movement smooth.

“Get,” Steve says, kicking at his side, and even though Bucky shuffles closer to the machine for him, Steve grunts and pulls him the rest of the way by his arm. Then he kicks him more and more until Bucky’s as shoved up against the side as he can get, everything but his face, which extends past the edge, facing out the same direction as the screen, gaze turned upward toward a towering Steve.

“Maybe I should play with the machine instead of you, huh? Make you sit down there for hours, curled up at my feet and kissing my shoes, waiting to see if I’ll ever thank you. Hoping every time I bend down and stick a quarter in the coin slot that I’ll stick it in you instead.”

“Yeah. Okay. You can.” He tries to claw his way through the floorboard with his right hand, to find some emotional purchase, but he can’t, so he finds purchase in holding the cuff of Steve’s pants with his left hand instead. Steve pats him on the head, then shakes him off.

“Hmm. No. I wouldn’t do that you, Buck. You deserve first play. Like you said, my toy’s toy isn’t my toy, right?”

“Yeah.”

“ _Right_?”

“Yeah! I said yeah. Come on. _Steve._ ” He takes a guess at what Steve wants and does kiss his shoes. Even if Steve can’t tell precisely, he kisses each of the scuff marks. Then he delivers a final kiss to his knee, which is marked with dust from the community center.

The whole time, Steve stands still and lets him, and with the kiss to his knee, he makes a small, pleased, “Hmm.” He crouches down, and Bucky feels like a dog in a shelter, meeting the human who wants to adopt it. Going with that feeling, he crawls forward a few inches and bumps his nose into Steve’s cheek. He growls in what he thinks is a friendly way. A hello growl. A growl of recognizing something good.

Steve gets it, he thinks. Steve hooks an arm around the back of Bucky’s neck and drags him closer. Bucky wraps his arms around Steve’s chest, and noses at his shoulder. “Hey, there, sweetheart,” Steve says and Bucky grunts and nips at the top of his deltoid. “Oh, so sorry to offend you, your majesty,” and Bucky laughs.

“Thanks.”

Steve turns his head to talk into Bucky’s ear. Not whispering; an overwhelmingly loud sound. “You know why else I wouldn’t do that to you, huh? Make you lie there while I play with your ugly boyfriend?”

“No. Why?”

He switches to a stage-whisper, a saccharine sing-song. “Because I still don’t understand how this fucking game works.”  

“You _eat_ the _ghosts_ , Rogers. It’s not hard.”

“I decide what’s hard.” And he’s an idiot who reaches between Bucky’s legs and palms the uncomfortably constricted bulge in his jeans. “Like that. Hard because I said it is.”

Bucky squirms as Steve touches his dick some more like he’s a cat batting a balloon around the room. Like he’s just keeping himself entertained, with no end in sight. Bucky’s dick tries to jerk into the light touch, but has nowhere to go, and every brush of his own underwear against the sensitive skin of his balls makes him bite his lip. He’s disappointed to not taste blood.

“All right, anyway,” Steve says, and stops the batting. He puts a hand to Bucky’s cheek, thumb under his jaw, and lifts his head. He uses the other hand to finger-comb a section of Bucky’s hair. “You’re all messed up,” he says, and Bucky nods. “Kneel up for me.”

He keeps his chin raised high when he does, and grips his kneecaps hard. Steve takes his lower lip between forefinger and thumb and pulls it down to expose the secret, wet flesh inside. He stares at him there, where he’s sensitive and pink, and licks his own lips. Bucky swallows and clenches his abs and his ass and feels something hot and viscous spreading through his head, down into his chest. Steve examines him so carefully.

Then he pulls the thumb out, runs up to the corner of Bucky’s mouth, and smiles. Bucky smiles back. Steve says, “I need a change of scenery. What do you think?”

“Do you care what I think?”

“No, but I asked, so you damn well better answer.”

“Change of scenery sounds beautiful, Steve! I think that’s a great idea!”

“I don’t _care_ what you think, thanks. Like a single opinion’s ever come out of that whore mouth that wasn’t garbage.”

Bucky smiles wider.

“Remember the day you ordered this?” Steve bangs his fist on the machine’s side. “You dragged yourself across the floor to me instead of crawling or walking like a nice, polite boy who wasn’t raised in the woods.”

“Yeah, I remember. That and nothing else.” His voice sounds weak. He snorts to compensate. “The rest of my life’s a blur.”

“Uh-huh. Could you do that again? Here to the living room?”

“Uh, yeah, Steve. I can drag myself to the _living room_. It’s right there, if you haven’t noticed.”

Steve pinches the flesh above his eyebrow. The sting lingers. “Shut up. I’m just making sure. I know how weak and pathetic you are sometimes. It would have been rude to assume.” He pushes on the freshly stinging skin. “Now, stay.”

Bucky stays, still gripping his knees, head still raised, and Steve gets up and goes to rummage through the vanity. Multiple times a month, he’ll ask, like he’s a kid at a museum, _Is it okay for me to look in here? Is it okay if I touch this? This shelf of your bookcase? Is it okay if I open the closet?_

Like things might have changed since the last time Bucky huffed at him and said, “Jesus, all my private stuff’s on my phone and computer, _relax._ Look and touch as you please.” Right now, at least, it seems to have sunk in.  

“You lookin’ for something in particular or just hoping some knickknack’ll strike your fancy?” Steve doesn’t answer. “I have a special drawer of things I’d like if you used on me.”

“Shut it. I know exactly what I’m looking for.”

“Oh, right. Man with a plan.” Bucky smirks at his back.

“I believe I told you to shut it. Now. You own far more combs than any human has ever needed.”

Each comb has a different purpose, but Bucky doesn’t talk back about it. Just watches the set of Steve’s shoulders and his mussed hair where it darkens at his neck.  And runs his tongue over the points of his teeth. He wants to chew on Steve’s hair. His neck. His writhing tongue as it fucks into his mouth and takes him along for the ride.

“There we go. I’m ready for you. Lie down on your front.”

Bucky executes a miniature swan-dive. Steve walks over in his flashy boots and stops in front of his face, so Bucky sticks his tongue out and licks at the toe of one. Steve clears his throat and lifts the boot so that he can gently shove it into Bucky’s nose and mouth. Dirty and dusty and Bucky shoves back against it with a moan. Steve takes it away and sits on the floor.

“Raise up on your elbows so it’s less like talking to a slug. And you can speak again.”

Raised up on his elbows, Bucky grins at Steve, then flicks his eyes to Steve’s hands. He’s clutching a stretchy grey headband that Bucky wears when working out sometimes. And a huge purple scrunchie.

“You’re doing my hair.”

“I’m not touching your disgusting hair. But this is a fun game. Guess again.”

“Why do you need both of them?”

“That’s not a guess.”

He bangs his forehead against Steve’s knee. “You’re going to do an inefficient job tying me up.”

“Correction: I’m going to do an impressive job tying you up for a very particular purpose.” He pulls on a strand of hair near Bucky’s temple, and Bucky lets it hurt more by staying still. “Now, I know it was all of thirty seconds ago, so you probably don’t remember, but I asked you if you could do something. And you said you could.”

“Drag myself to the living room.”   
  
“Awww. Good boy.” Steve rewards him with a smack in the mouth. Bucky startles and blinks, and licks his lips. He stretches his neck forward, hoping he’ll get to lick Steve’s hand too, but Steve’s holding it out of reach. “These are to make you sure you don’t forget.” He rubs the back of Bucky’s neck. “Down again. I’ll let you know when I need you to make yourself useful.”

The hairband stretches enough to make it halfway up his thighs before cutting off too much circulation. With that in place, holding him tight and trapped, Bucky wriggles, until Steve stills him with a hand wrapped around his calf. “Calm down. You’re not ready.” And he eases the scrunchie up Bucky’s legs, rolling it along instead of starting with it stretched out. Everywhere it moves over him, his skin prickles. Steve stops its progression when it gets to under his knees.

“It can go further. Those are real stretchy.”

“I don’t care. This is exactly how I want you.” Steve pets him, from the back of his neck, down to his ass, and then down his right leg, stopping at his sneaker. “Wait. Why the fuck are you still wearing shoes.”

“You didn’t tell me not to.”

“Like that always makes a difference.” He makes short work of pulling the sneakers off, and tosses them under the table-bed.  “Things like you don’t need shoes, do you? What a waste of manpower and material.”

“Sorry, Steve. You could make me eat them.”

Steve laughs, huge and then breaking apart into tiny prancing laughter animals. “I’m not making you eat your fucking shoes. I don’t think your weak little teeth could handle that.” He moves around to Bucky’s front so he can stick a finger in his mouth and run it over the top row of his weak little teeth.

“Okay. You’re right,” Bucky says with the finger still on his teeth.

“No shit. Now come on. We need to go to the living room. I’m spent enough time in your filth for one day.”

Physically, it isn’t hard, not with his left arm being as good as it is. But it’s uncomfortable, and slow going. It might not be if it were a strictly utilitarian exercise, but considering that his hard, sore dick drags against the ground with every movement and he has to bite his tongue and hold all his muscles tight to stop from reacting to that, he isn’t the speediest person around right now.   

Steve starts out of the room walking at a normal pace and gets a good six feet away before pretending to notice that Bucky isn’t right there with him. He turns and looks down at where Bucky’s pulling himself across the carpet, bound legs dragging behind him like a mermaid tail, and he groans and probably rolls his eyes, even knowing Bucky can’t see him too well from this position. Steve is a set of impatient legs and some kind of mid-section and irritated arms folding across his chest.

“Jesus,” Steve says. “You’re still all the way back there?”

“Yeah, unless your depth perception got fucked back up.”

“I’m thinking I should have taken your jeans off too. Carpet burn would be a good incentive to not be such a slowpoke.”

“Carpet burn is worse when you go fast, Steve.”

“Exactly. Am I supposed to be incentivizing you a different way?”

“I have some ideas.”

“Don’t you always.” Steve walks back to meet him, the distance smaller now, since Bucky’s been obediently, torturously pulling himself closer as they talked. It’s kind of a let-down; he would have liked to focus on getting to Steve, Steve like a wad of cash tied to the bumper of a car that keeps driving away.

But now Steve stands over him, to the side so Bucky can’t see him at all. There’s an inch or so of distance between them. Steve is a presence, hot and enormous and threatening and quiet, until he says, “Why did you stop moving?”

Bucky lets his eyes close. “Follow the Leader. You aren’t moving either.”

“That’s none of your concern.” Steve places his boot on Bucky’s ass and rubs him with it, slowly, tender like it’s his hand. And Bucky’s used to the concept of a hand this hard being capable of softness, so sure, of course. Then Steve kicks him, not that hard, but only barely to the left of his hole.

Bucky jumps, his spine curling upward like a Halloween cat’s, and he gasps, and he whines in a short breath.

“This a good incentive?”

“Yeah. I feel real incentivized.”

“Act like it.”

He acts like it, dragging himself with renewed fervor, Steve loping alongside him, sometimes kicking at his ass again or his hip or the arch of his foot, sometimes getting on the ground himself (and Bucky understands now to keep moving when Steve stops) and stretching the headband or scrunchie so it snaps back against him in a burning line.

Before too long, with a sore right arm and his legs feeling heavy and false, he crosses the threshold into the living room. Steve says, “Little more,” and they stop by the window, where daylight filters past the curtains.

“You didn’t fuck up,” Steve says, kneeling at Bucky’s side, voice deep and rich. He pushes on Bucky’s shoulder so that he’ll let himself lie all the way flat, his cheek against the smooth hardwood, facing Steve’s still-dusty knees.

Bucky says, “Mmm,” and shimmies his hips so his bound legs wag from side to side. “Now what happens?”

Steve leans down, becoming a grin instead of a pair of knees. He kisses the tip of Bucky’s nose, then shoves on his left shoulder until he’s rolled over on his back. They’re both moving slower, talking slower, looking slower than they were in Bucky’s room, time like an unbroken string of drool connecting them. But Bucky is still painfully hard, and still painfully full of love, and Steve’s face is still like he could swallow Bucky whole and still demand more of him.

Steve straddles him, the top of his hips and the lowest bit of his stomach. Exactly the place that would make it hardest for Bucky to throw him off. Bucky bends his left elbow behind him so he can lift his head more easily and watch Steve, who’s pushing the sweatshirt up again and petting Bucky’s stomach. Some stretches of his skin are sticky with dried sweat, but Steve finds the softest, smoothest places, where he can touch him friction-free.

“This what happens?” Bucky asks. “Not a complaint. You look so good right now, Steve.”

Steve grunts. He sticks a finger in Bucky’s navel and grabs some nearby flesh and pinches. It’s a harsh, sharp sensation, and Bucky jerks away from it and makes a noise like a wounded cat. Steve laughs. He pets him again. The pain is still there. A very solid kind of pain.

“I don’t know,” Steve says. He pushes the sweatshirt higher, and begins to grab at Bucky’s nipples with no finesse. Yanking, soothing with the pad of a thumb, digging his fingernail straight into the center. He ducks down and licks each one with his whole tongue, then bites hard around the right, probably leaving a ring of tooth marks. Bucky’s chest arches toward his mouth, and Steve sits up again. Goes back to touching his nipples with his fingers, in whatever way occurs to him, while Bucky pants, and makes high, mousy sounds, and says Steve’s name between them.

“My dumb little Mickey Mouse,” Steve says, rocking the tip of his finger against a nipple so that there’s constant alternating between the smooth skin and the rigid nail.

“That makes you Minnie Mouse,” he mutters with his face screwed up.

“I’m fine with that.” He dives in to drag his teeth down Bucky’s cheek, down his neck, to clamp around his clavicle, then removes them, but stays with his face close. “You know how badly I want to open you up and look inside. Play with whatever I find in there?”

“You can. You can look in my mouth. You can look in my asshole. Look wherever you want, Steve. Christ.”

“All of you. I want to look inside _all of you_. You got that?”

Bucky nods and whimpers and bumps the crown of his skull against Steve’s chin.

Steve cradles the back of his head in one hand and kisses the corner of his eye. He lowers him down. There’s no more fucking with Bucky’s nipples, but he stays straddling him, sure and good.

“What’s in the secret drawer?” He puts his knuckles to the side of Bucky’s jaw, and Bucky grinds his teeth so they’ll both feel the resistance.

“Office supplies, mostly. From my office.”

“You’re _stealing_ from _work_?”

“Aw, Steve, where’s your solidarity with the labor force?”

Steve moves his hands to Bucky’s ribs and starts fucking tickling him, and says, “It’s right here,” and Bucky yelps and twists as the fingers move to the space between his waist and the bottom of his rib cage, and then stroke lightly around his knee and down the sides and at the back, and Bucky engages in some yelping at a higher pitch around his breathy giggling, and bucks and tries to throw Steve off while Steve laughs at him.

Steve stops. He puts his palm over Bucky’s chest and pushes him down, grinding him into the floor. “Are you going to keep stealing?”

“Yes, and you’re proud of me for it.”

“You don’t want me to say it, though, right?” All of his face is serious except for his mouth, where his lips and teeth don’t meet and he holds it in a funny little wedge shape.

Bucky covers his eyes with his left forearm. “No, you can say it.”

He’s pulled out of the safe dark of not existing by Steve’s grip around his left wrist, which holds his arm straight up in the air. Now all of Steve looks serious and sharp and lovely when he says, “I’m proud of you. For stealing.”

Frowning and squinting is allowed thank god, but humping up against Steve’s ass probably wouldn’t be, which is an issue, but he’s well, _good_. He focuses on holding his hips still.

Things are looking bleak with regards to whether he’s going to get to come this afternoon, or just mess up his boxers leaking in them and rutting a hole through the fabric. But Steve is nice, and he’ll wrap a cold, soaked washcloth around Bucky’s dick for him if he has to.  

Like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it, Steve shifts his ass on Bucky’s crotch, and Bucky whimpers some more, but cuts himself off.

“This drawer got a stapler?”

“Uh, no.” Staplers are big-ticket items, trickier to steal. “But you do.”

“I do. What a smart little idiot. What if I told you to go get my stapler right now? What if I told you to steal a special stapler just for me to use on you because I don’t want _my_ stapler getting filthy from touching you?”

Images of what Steve could do with a stapler run through his head: beat him with it, staple his earlobes and call him pretty and snicker about it, staple his lip (no, probably not that one), make him sit still while he gets staples shot at him (definitely yes).

“Yeah. Both. Either. I’d do either of those, Steve. Please. Come on, tell me to.”

Steve smiles at him. “Well, I’ll let you know if I decide I want that. Anything in there besides office supplies?”

“Of course. I’m not boring. There’s a lot of gum. And ping pong balls.”

Steve’s face is blank. “Gum.”

“I’ve been thinking about that cooking show, uh. Everyone gets ingredients, and they can do whatever they want with them—Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“You know cooking shows make me uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, yeah, fine. But they do what they want and the judges _have_ to eat it. Like that, but I give you some weird shit and you decide how to hurt me with it and I +have to take whatever you decide. Does that sound fun?” He’s been thinking about it a lot, lately, hoarding the idea, getting more and more nervous that Steve might not think it sounds fun at all.

“I dunno. You planning to tell me my food is shit?”

“No? The bad food is the good food.”

“Uh-huh. Makes perfect sense. Thanks.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “It _does_. When the judges get handed something awful that they don’t wanna eat, they eat it and complain. When you hand me something awful I don’t wanna take, I’ll take it and tell you how amazing it was. Come on. I was being pretty clear.”

Steve swats him on the cheek. “Hey. Maybe I’m stupid.”

“Good point. Maybe.” Steve hits him again, this time a real slap, and Bucky leans into the blow.

“You wanna go down that path?”

“Hmm. Can you hit me again?” Steve does. “Okay. I’m sorry. Why would I get to call someone else stupid? What do I know?”

“That’s right.”

Steve kisses him, furiously, hooking a finger into the corner of his mouth and spreading it so Bucky can’t kiss back much more than flopping his tongue like a fish, until Steve captures his tongue in his teeth and bites and it makes him whine and flounder around and need to tap on Steve’s arm in morse code, _I’m about to come_.

Steve pulls away. “No. You aren’t. Wait here a sec.”

And Bucky lies back, waiting, while Steve goes to get him a cold, soaking washcloth, and takes care of his dick for him, and then kisses him some more, with slightly less biting.

They migrate to the couch, Steve climbing on top of Bucky’s supine and fucked-loose body with an open-mouthed smile and slow motions. He drops himself onto him, a lead blanket, here to protect Bucky from radiation.

“That’s nice,” he says, and Bucky pets the top of his head, kisses him there, strokes the bridge of his nose.

“Can I roll over?” he whispers.

Steve looks up at him with one eye closed and says amicably, “Okay, weirdo.” He inches back to kneel at the very edge of the couch cushions while Bucky flips onto his front. The lead blanket returns, a hot sprawl, and kisses the skin behind Bucky’s ear.

Bucky says, “You’re the weirdo.”

“Oh, really?”

“I’m not the one who just did all that!”

“You’re the one who started making time with that thing in the first place.”

“Hmm. I suppose. But you made it so much better.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. A great time was had by all. Promise.” He adds in a whisper, “You fucked up, perfect pervert.”

 

That night, Bucky microwaves several bags of frozen dumplings. Through the whole process, Steve makes him lie on the floor and ask to get up every time the microwave beeps. Steve’s on the floor with him; they’re hypothetically playing checkers down there, but Steve keeps standing up and going off to do things, just to make a point of the fact that he can.

Every time Bucky says, “Steve, can I get that?” and waits for the answer like Steve isn’t equally invested in their dinner being ready and might, this once, say, “Nah, I don’t think so,” he feels sleepy and warm. Like he doesn’t really want to go get the dumplings, not when he could lie on the floor and look at Steve walking around or plotting his next move, and _ask_ to go get the dumplings, and get shot down.

Anyway, eventually everything is microwaved and plated and ready to eat, and Bucky kicks the checker board on his way to the table.  “Oh, fuck. Fucking piece of shit. Guess that’s ruined.”

Steve glances at him, and puts their glasses of water down. “You’re fine. If you want to keep playing later, I remember where everything was.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s to stop you cheating?”

“My scrupulous honesty.” Bucky sits, and steals a dumpling off Steve’s plate and stares at him, chewing slowly. “Or my infamous lack of poker face.”

“There you go. Better answer.” He stuffs his mouth with three dumplings at once. “Okay. I trust you.”

Steve throws a napkin at him. “Have some dignity over there.”

Bucky shakes his head happily, and adds a fourth dumpling.  

With his mouth emptied, and between sips of water, he says, “You know there’s a Ms. Pac-Man too? The yellow circle’s done up like Lana Turner.”

“That makes me feel like I did something wrong.”

“Oh, I thought it was nice. I think looking at it jump-started some memories.”

“That’s the dumbest shit you ever said. What memories?” Not looking at what he’s doing, Steve pushes his plate and glass away, like he’s making a space in front of him to hold Bucky’s pain, in case that’s what he needs. It’s stupid and unbearably sweet and Bucky longs for the fainting couch he was promised.

“Good memories.”

“Of jerking off to Lana Turner?” Steve pulls his stuff back toward him, and takes a long swig of water. Worrying always makes him thirsty.

“I never jerked off to Lana Turner. You know I never jerked off to Lana Turner. She just seemed nice.”

“Picture Lana Turner holding a gun now. You remember that?”

“She seemed nice holding a gun. I think I identified with her.”

"Yeah? You want to be a femme fatale?"

"Not anymore. I was enough of a femme fatale for Hydra. There’s not much fun in it.” Steve looks at him with a smile like he’s chewing something, head tilted back and to the side, so Bucky clarifies, “The grease paint.” Draws helpful circles in the air in front of his eyes.

“That’s a good point. And the leather.”

“Leather’s modern femme fatales. Where’d you ever see Lana Turner in leather?”

“We’re modern girls now, Buck. I make modern cultural references.”

 

It’s true that Steve remembers where all the checkers were on the board. And he’s only sort of smug about putting them back. “Look,” he says, “There’s a trick to remembering. You divide it into a grid—”

“It’s already a grid. It’s a checkerboard.”

“No, it’s your own grid. You divide in on your own terms.”

“Please don’t teach me anything else.”

Probably Steve didn’t cheat, because Bucky wins in a few moves. “King me.”

“That’s a different thing.”

“Okay, no, the game is over. I won. King me.”

“Which in this context means?”

“I don’t know.” He stretches out on his back. “Be my king?”

“Monarchy's evil, you know.”

“I don’t care. Love you. Be my king, asshole.”

So Steve looks to the side in a put-on of irritation, but shrugs and nods. He lies down too, to kiss him, a spit-filled mess that tastes like dumplings, each of them clinging to the other like they’re caught in a thunderstorm and trying to hide under one small umbrella.

Sharp pain flings itself up his spine, lumbar to cervical. Repeat. Repeat.

“Ow.” When he says it, he pictures himself as a giant, floating sad face, and it’s not like there are any mirrors around to prove him wrong.

“That’s a bit belated.”

“No. It’s a new ow.” It happens again, and he shudders. “The usual corporeal bullshit.”

Steve makes a throaty sound of comfort. He massages the knob of bone at the back of Bucky’s neck, and Bucky blinks at him, stifling a yawn. “Nice man,” he says. “Nice hands.”

“That is what it says on my business card.” He massages harder, with knuckles now. “I’m going to make you tea.”

“What’ll that do?”

“You’ll have tea. And you’ll like it.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks for clearing that up.” He bites Steve’s chin, and Steve pinches his top lip in return.

While the kettle heats—they have a real kettle, not that suspect electronic nonsense—Steve hovers by the icebox, looking at Bucky, shifting his shoulders around without seeming to realize. Bucky sits up to get a good view of him.

“So you definitely can’t, uh.” Steve swivels his hand in the air like a waving queen. “You know.”

“Oh, no, I can definitely—” Bucky mimics his motion.

“Transform. It?”

“Into what, a rhinoceros?”

“No. You know what I mean. Can you act like it’s me stabbing you?”

“What—oh. What, like you shrank really small, burrowed into my spine, and started stabbing me from _inside_?”

“I suppose. I mean, I think that’s something you’d like. Right? If it were possible.”

“If it were possible, I don’t know about that. Conceptually, of course. I think it’s amazing and I can’t wait to come thinking about it. But I can’t lie to myself. Internal pain—It’s always gonna be my body fucking me over. I can’t pretend it’s not, Steve.”

“Oh. So. Huh.”

“What?”  
  
“Nothing. It’s funny—”

“Yeah, my pain’s a hoot.”

“Depends on the pain. You _know_ that. No, it’s funny, when I was younger, when I was hurting—”

“When always—”

Steve gives him a look telling him to shut up, and Bucky rolls his eyes and slaps his hand over his own mouth.

“When I was hurting _especially bad_ , I’d think sometimes, ‘This would be so easy if I were like Bucky.’ And I’d. Kind of pretend I was.”

“What?” He didn’t really mean to squawk it, but he also really did. He can’t help that it’s hilarious, even as he does feel bad when Steve hides his face in his hands.

“Yeah, well, it helped.”

“Well, honey, I promise I don’t pop a stiffie every time I get heartburn.”

“Fine. So you can’t transform it.”

“I’ve tried. Believe me.”

“Well, I’ll keep brainstorming.”

“But, no, I think that’s sweet that you thought that. I do. I’m happy I helped.”

Steve looks like he’s walking on a broken ankle. His mouth stretches out all the way to one side, then springs back. “You,” he starts.

“Me. Bucky. I remember.”

“You always _helped._ You always.” Now he looks like he’s going to throw up from walking on the broken ankle. Broken-ankled vomiting Steve is a Steve that Bucky has handled before, but that was a Steve who mostly complained; he didn’t take a deep breath and finish, “Help. Always.”

With that sentiment on the table, they glare at each other in silence. Maybe they’ll both throw up. That would be romantic.

No one throws up. Bucky crawls over to him. When he’s at Steve’s feet, he rubs his face on his knee, then stands, and gets behind Steve and wraps himself around him. Arms under Steve’s arms and locked in place around his chest, face nuzzling at the curve of Steve’s neck. He laughs a little, even though his stomach feels like wobbling egg whites or a wobbling phantom or whatever the fuck those Weeble things are. Steve puts a hand around Bucky’s left wrist and sighs, letting go of the imaginary broken ankle of it all.

Bucky stuffs his mouth with Steve’s hair, sucking on the ends. He says around it, “Okay, I’m happy to help,” and Steve says, “Yeah, Buck. Me too.”  

 

 

They’re spooning on Bucky’s table-bed. It’s the right time of night for Bucky to go to sleep, but he can tell that Steve won’t be sleeping, not any time soon, maybe not tonight at all. He’s been holding his eyes too wide for that. Talking with too much intensity. But even when they both know it’s not a night for falling asleep in each other’s arms, Steve likes to spend time in Bucky’s arms, and be there when Bucky nods off and gets heavy and lax. At some point after that, he’ll pry himself loose and go wander around and clean and draw and generally drive himself crazier.

Right now, though, they’re both tucked under a blanket, and Bucky hugs Steve around the middle like he’s a giant stuffed animal. He can nose all he likes at the back and side of Steve’s neck, and at his shoulder, and kiss the imposing, straight edge of his jaw. And Steve breathes easier when he does. Tension still floods his whole body, but it chills out a little for the moment. There, but quiet.

Kicking one leg back to slot it between both of Bucky’s, Steve asks, “So the machine just lives in here then?”

“Yep. It’s a two-robot room now. Get used to it.”

“Your problem. Not mine. It is, uh. _Loud_ -looking, though, isn’t it? And haunted. They always say, ‘Don’t bring haunted, old objects into your home.’”

“Then why’d you bring me in here?”

“I’m not much for common sense.”  

“Yeah, I noticed.” Steve reaches down to pinch Bucky’s thigh through his pajama pants, and in return, he gets a small intake of breath on his neck, and Bucky wriggling closer.

Bucky says, “When you sleep in here, you could, uh. If you needed, put a sheet over it. So you don’t wake up in the night and have a clown statue situation.”

“We had a clown statue?”

“No, the story with the clown statue.”

“If I felt like moving, I’d be staring in bewilderment. To be clear.”

“Noted. The babysitter who asks about the clown statue. Sam texted me this story.”

“You mean texted it to me and said to show it to you.”

“Exactly. So I know you read it, because you love committing federal crimes like reading my mail.” Steve laughs, completely shameless. “He texted you about a babysitter and a clown statue. It was an elaborate setup for calling me the clown statue.”

“Okay, you know what, I remember this now. I didn’t like it.”

“Anyway, you could cover the machine with a sheet. I could cover the machine with a sheet for you.”

“I should cover _you_ with a sheet.” He takes hold of Bucky’s knee and clamps down. Bucky kicks feebly, so Steve will get to feel the play of muscles against his palm.  
  
“Yeah, I mean, that is typically something you do when we go to bed. It’s not a very ominous threat.”

“I’ll cover you with three sheets and three blankets. You’ll be _too warm._ ”  

Bucky snorts, and then, his timing off, fakes a gasp of terror. “What did I do to deserve this threat again?”

“Oh, well. Spent years leading me to believe that it’s socially acceptable to threaten you whenever I want.”

“’Socially acceptable?’ I really didn’t mean to make you think it was _socially acceptable._ ”

“No?”

“No! I don’t think I should have the power to dictate social norms like that.”

“Well, you’re hot stuff. You’re a trendsetter.”

“The trend being you threatening me?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, well fine. As long as it’s just you.”

“And certain kinds of shirts. I mean, they’re not going to threaten you. That was about the trendsetting.”

“Which kinds of shirts?” He suspects that even under threat of torture, Steve wouldn’t be able to name any kinds of shirts besides, “t-shirt,” and, “with buttons.” Maybe, on a good day, he can differentiate between a V-neck and a crew neck. It always used to frustrate Bucky that Steve wouldn’t take more of an interest in clothing when he was so invested in the design aspects of everything else. It felt willful.  

But, well. Steve always looks appreciatively at Bucky’s clothes now, at least. And being complimented on his clothing doesn’t feel as weird and difficult to handle as being complimented on anything else.

Even still, Steve says, “The ones that look good on you. I’m joking, Buck. Those don’t exist. The ones that look okay and unobjectionable on you.” And it’s really funny because just yesterday he was talking about how Bucky’s floral Shirt with Buttons brought out his eyes.

Bucky tightens his grip on him. Kisses the back of his head. “There a lot of those, then?”

“Of course not. But that’s okay. I’m thinking I’ll keep you around anyway.”

“Yeah? I’d like that. If you do that? That’s fine with me.”

 

 

The machine doesn’t work, and that’s okay. The first thing Bucky does once he’s got it opened up is snip a section from each different color of wire. He’s been home for half an hour, had a small snack and taken out the trash, and now he’s sitting on the floor with the sleeves of his work shirt rolled up and his hair pulled back with the scrunchie Steve used to bind his legs.

He’s had a long day. He started dissociating at his desk because of some bullshit in a manuscript he was supposed to read through, and it took a lot of bargaining with himself before he decided that if he went in the bathroom and splashed water on his face and described the walls and floors and all aloud for himself, it wouldn’t necessarily be obvious to everyone else in the office that he’s a nutcase.

He scatters his clipped bits of wire on the ground beside him like pick-up sticks. Peaceful pick-up sticks. No challenge in them. And he takes ten minutes to just look inside at everything else. To stroke the sides, the wires, the chips. There’s so much more empty space in there than he would have thought. If only he were small enough to crawl right in.

He replaces the back. He takes a bit of ribbon from his desk drawer and ties it around the middle of the wire clippings. Jimmies open the loose floorboard beneath his table-bed. Inside are all his other wires and wire-adjacent possessions, tangled up together like puppies. He drops these in with them, and seals them up safely beneath the floorboard.

He crawls out from under the bed and texts Steve, _Hey, I’m home. Where’d you get to? Bring back food._ He looks at the message after it’s sent, thinking it’s missing something. He sends another: _Ghost food, I mean._

**Author's Note:**

> During sex, something reminds Bucky of having a gun pressed into his back. He starts to panic, but he recognizes what's happening and he and Steve deal with it quickly; it doesn't become a larger issue.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [aching towards fluency](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11939235) by [waitfortheclick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waitfortheclick/pseuds/waitfortheclick)




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